I wonder if Senator Wolf would be willing to disclose the same financial information on his business that he is asking home insurers to divulge on theirs? [Jan. 20, Page A:7] Is he willing to divulge, beyond what is required by law, how he arrived at a $120 airfare from Hyannis to Nantucket? I seriously doubt it. If I and 50 of my closest friends think that fare is outrageous should we expect the state to force him to reveal proprietary information crucial to the success of his business?

His story about the insurance cost of his home jumping 800 percent over 25 years is an incomplete narrative at best. Inflation alone would have doubled the original cost over that period and he fails to detail what improvements have been made. He also fails to mention that both the reconstruction cost and the market value of that home have increased dramatically over 25 years. What should his insurance cost be? I don’t know, but neither does he.

The same type of government-knows-best thinking resulted in Massachusetts auto insurance rates being some of the highest in the nation a few years ago. After the state finally woke up and allowed auto insurance companies to compete, guess what – rates dropped dramatically. So much so that average auto premiums in the state decreased 12.7 percent between 2007 and 2009. The national average for the same time period was 1.4 percent.

The reason was simple. The elimination of auto insurance price setting attracted 13 new insurance companies to the state. Competition works – government meddling stifles competition and raises prices.

The knee-jerk reaction of most Democrats is that anything that costs more than they think it should must be the result of some nefarious activity on the part of an offending company. The all-Democratic Massachusetts state government is a prime offender. Continuing to vilify the home insurance companies will cause the same thing to happen as state meddling in the auto insurance business. Businesses will say enough, stop competing for business in Massachusetts and prices will rise dramatically. Senator Wolf as a businessman must know this.